


Familiar

by lemonparapluie



Category: She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018)
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, Other, Shadow Weaver is a bitch, someone save entrapta please
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-29
Updated: 2018-11-29
Packaged: 2019-09-02 09:44:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,503
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16784482
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lemonparapluie/pseuds/lemonparapluie
Summary: Shadow Weaver is a bitch, Entrapta is mising, Scorpia is worried and Catra finds the whole situation a little too familiar.





	Familiar

The Fright Zone felt unusually quiet as Catra walked the empty halls. It was never particularly lively but she had grown accustomed to the sound of Scorpia chatting away and Entrapta hurtling up and down the air vents over the last couple of months. Recently though, the clattering and clanging of metal had gone quiet and Scorpia had approached her, worrying her lip between her teeth, to report the smaller princess missing. She had apparently disappeared a few hours ago in search of new parts and hadn’t returned since. And so Catra set off to find her. 

Instead she had come across Entrapta’s constant companion, the little white recorder, singed with the tell tale sign of dark magic. Entrapta was fairly new in her life and a little unpredictable, but Shadow Weaver was a game she’d played many times before, so the events that had enfolded in the tiny storage room were hardly a mystery. 

Lost in a cloud of thought and an intense drive to hunt down and hurt Shadow Weaver, Catra very nearly missed it: the faint sound of sniffling. Perking up her ears she followed it along the corridor.

“Entrapta,” she called out, knocking on the metal where the noise sounded the loudest from. The wall fell silent.

“It’s Catra.” She tried again. Still no reply.

“I’ve got your recorder.” This time there was a shuffle, and Catra heard the other girl come closer. “I don’t know the way round the air vents so you’re gonna have to come and get it.”

There was no further motion from behind the wall and Catra didn’t hear the girl make any attempt to move from her current positon. She sighed, irritably. This was a lot harder than she thought it would be. Patience was never a strong suit of Catra’s but as her mind wandered to Adora going out of her way to make sure she was okay, she nudged a little more.

“Can you at least show me an entrance? Then I can pass it up?”

After a moment of no response Catra was just about ready to give up, when there was a scrape of metal and the sound of feet padding away. She followed the footsteps - which occasionally had to pause for her to catch up - through a maze of passages until they stopped by a vent in the ceiling. Catra pushed it open and hopped up with ease, but before she had a chance to say anything the recorder was snatched from her pocket and Entrapta was already half-way down the tunnel.

“Shit.” She cursed, blindly trying to sniff out her scent. The vents were surprisingly wide enough to crawl through without much difficulty and after a while her eyes began to adjust to the low light. It wasn’t long before she found a dark heap slumped against the vent wall. 

“Hey,” she grunted, arranging herself opposite the princess. Entrapta was curled up, hair wrapped around herself, clutching the returned device.

“Is it broken?” Catra asked, gesturing to the recorder when Entrapta made no effort to return the greeting.

“The exterior is damaged but no data appears to have been lost.” Her mask was pulled over her face and it muffled her voice, but Catra didn’t need to see or hear to know she was relieved. She knew how important that little stick was to her.

“You got on Shadow Weaver’s bad side, huh? Been there done that.” She laughed, bitterly. Entrapta shrunk even further into the wall, mumbling softly into the recorder.

“Day 36 - irrelevant to findings - I’m not sure I like the Fright Zone so much now.”

“It’s not irrelevant.” Catra shot back reflexively, mirroring the many times Adora had brushed away her own ‘what does it matter’s. “I know she can be a bitch sometimes, you’ve got to try not to take it too much to heart.”

Although hard to tell, Entrapta didn’t seem convinced. Absentmindedly Catra went to rake her fingers through the pink mass of hair but as she reached out the hair retracted. Alarm bells rang in her mind; Entrapta rarely initiated contact but she had never known her to shy away from it.

“What did she do?” Her voice hardened, and though the edge was not aimed at the princess in front of her the smaller girl still flinched at the change in tone. There was a distorted whirr and the recorder started playing.

“What do you think you’re doing?” A tinny version of Shadow Weaver’s voice rang out.

“I’m looking for some more connecting metal to hook up to the rune stone - preferably some that won’t melt as easily this time.”

Catra almost winced: the rune stone was a bit of a sore subject for the sorceress and she could feel the tension though the static air.

“Get out of here.”

“I won’t be long, I have a fairly good idea of what I need. Have you seen...”

Then there was a clatter of what must have been the recorder skidding across the floor, as the voices became a lot more distant.

“You will not disobey me. The nerve of you coming in here after all you’ve done. And to be foolish enough to think you can come anywhere close to what I’ve harnessed from the rune stone!”

“I was also surprised at first!” The princess chirped back, completely oblivious. “But if our current readings are right, we’re even closer than ever to unlocking the Black Garnet’s full potent -“ the sentence was cut off by a thud, a crash and a yelp, then the recording went blank.

All the rage Catra had expected to build up dissipated at that sorry little noise. She’d had her fair share of bad run-ins with Shadow Weaver but Entrapta, Entrapta wasn’t the same as her. Catra bit back, pushed the soceress’ buttons out of pure spite. It was never right, but it was never a totally one-sided fight. The tiny princess on the other-hand meant no harm, saw no danger.

“I’m sorry.” The older girl muttered, hating that she didn’t foresee this. Did she really think she was Shadow Weaver’s only plaything? Of course she’d never been that special. 

“It wasn’t you’re fault.” The face-guard shifted, looking at her for the first time. “Hearing it back, I now see how I misinterpreted the situation.”

A snort escaped Catra; she could imagine the image matching the recording perfectly. Entrapta bouncing off the walls, too caught up in her experiment for the possibility that not everyone was excited about it as she was to even occur. The princess tilted her head even further at the sound and Catra spotted a reddened patch of skin.

“Let me see your face.” Entrapta froze, analysed their positions, understanding what was behind the question. Slowly she peeled back the mask.

They weren’t awful: a bleeding lip and a bruise beneath the eye. They didn’t come close to some of the mutilation Catra had seen since becoming force captain but for some reason seeing the wounds on Entrapta made her an unfamiliar kind of uneasy. How could Shadow Weaver have wanted to damage someone so excited, so interested in everything.

“She stood on my hair.” Entrapta informed her, as if it was somehow an important detail. Or maybe she was just filling in the gaps in the story her face didn’t portray. Reciting facts. Recording data. 

No, not this time, Catra thought as she watched tears build up in the other girl’s eyes. Something about the way she murmured it, quiet and confused, was different than usual - like it was a secret just for her and Catra to hear. 

“We can brush out the damage.” The taller girl reassured leaning in to take a look at the frazzled and awkwardly bent strands in the offended area.

“Why would she do that?” Seeing Entrapta bewildered and not excited about it was strange.

“Who knows.” Catra shrugged, and slowly raised her hand pausing it above the hair. As soon as she felt it push up against her hand, she began to move again - combing out the mess. Entrapta hummed, eyes closed as Catra threaded it through her claws.

“Why don’t you come back down now? Scorpia probably has a prober comb.”

“I don’t think so.” Was the hurried reply, the words stumbling into each other.

“Aren’t you hungry or thirsty?” Catra tried tentatively, not wanting to push too hard.

“I’m fine up here.” The princess shuffled back and pulled the mask back over her face. Catra nodded.

“Okay. See you later then.”

Neither her nor Scorpia saw her for the rest of the day. But Catra sneaked some stale bread out and took a glass of water with her to bed. Although her role had changed, the routine wasn’t an unfamiliar one and so it didn’t surprise her to hear the cup drained and the bread inhaled in the dead of the night.

What did surprise her was the weight that settled on her feet as a tiny figure curled up beside her.


End file.
